Today was a big one for EMC, with the company launching or updating 41 storage products, including the new VNX storage system. EMC’s press and analyst event was equally notable, with a large crowd of insiders (including me) brought to New York City to watch a sideshow of world records set. Although Wall Street noticed all the fuss and rewarded the company with a decade-high stock price, some actions away from the AXA Equitable Center drew the ire of EMC competitor, NetApp.
EMC’s $3 Billion Announcement
The events of January 18, 2011 marked a new boldness for EMC marketing. The storage giant is not known as a clever marketing machine, but change is in the air. New Chief Marketing Officer Jeremy Burton was lauded by many today for the bolder strategy, and the company’s management, board, and stockholders must be pleased by his performance.
EMC’s share price has slumped for almost a decade, yet has risen steadily over the past year. Although lagging behind rival NetApp in terms of growth, EMC shares jumped dramatically over the last three days. As the details of today’s announcement leaked, the stock rose $1.50, or about 5%. With 2.1 billion shares outstanding, this gain represents $3 billion of market capitalization.
While EMC’s engineering team delivered a compelling new unified storage platform as well as solid upgrades across the line, EMC’s marketing deserves much of the credit for the sudden rise in valuation. Opinions regarding the product announcements were positive but not overwhelmingly so. But the “record breaking” theme of the event generated buzz from unlikely corners and drew applause from the audience.
NetApp Decries “Childish” Moves
EMC’s marketing push also included pointed taunts at one key enterprise storage rival, NetApp. Tuesday morning saw a fleet of Mini Cooper cars wrapped in EMC branding parked outside NetApp’s Sunnyvale headquarters, and EMC slogans appeared on the pavement outside at least two offices.
This guerilla marketing tactic was lauded by the EMCers I talked to in New York. They chuckled at the audacious “branding” of NetApp’s offices, passing around photos of the cars on Twitter and internal sites.
NetApp PR director, Roger Villareal, voiced the annoyance expressed by some within that company at the pointed statement made by EMC’s moves. “EMC defaced NetApp HQ sidewalks,” tweeted Villareal, while others speculated about the nature of the marking campaign.
EMC insiders tell me they used a stencil and power washer to avoid “vandalizing” the NetApp property in a more-permanent manner, but the folks at NetApp were not so sure. One suggested it was “acid etched” and thus a permanent defacement of the property.
Update: Chad Sakac of EMC has unambiguously stated that this was “power-washed with a stencil.” NetApp should be able to easily remove the lettering by pressure-washing the surrounding area.
The presence of branded EMC Mini Cooper cars at NetApp HQ also raised questions. EMC pulled a similar stunt in November of last year, sending in billboard trucks during a major NetApp announcement. The photo of the EMC Minis was first tweeted and uploaded to the YFrog account of none other than Jeremy Burton, suggesting his pride at the action.
Note that these stunts occurred far from EMC’s announcement and would likely only be visible to NetApp employees but for the power of the Internet. Even Twitter, puzzlingly propelled more by NetApp tweets than from EMC, didn’t increase their visibility much. These stunts appear to be designed for the internal consumption of EMC and NetApp employees.
Stephen’s Stance
Native Americans of the American plains demonstrated their courage through the “coup” of touching their opponents and escaping unharmed. EMC appears similarly to “count coup” by “tagging” NetApp’s buildings with their logo and message. But what’s the point?
Such stunts are hardly unusual in corporate PR, but uncommon in enterprise storage. It is unlikely that customer buying decisions would be impacted positively by actions like this. In fact, large enterprise customers might be turned off by behavior they view as childish.
The launch of the VNX series, which is obviously inspired by and aimed at NetApp, does mesh with these branding stunts in one way: They show that EMC considers NetApp their main market threat. This must be gratifying to the smaller Sunnyvale company, and should entice the storage teams at HP, Dell, IBM, Oracle, and HDS to step up their games.
You might also want to read Every Company Is Gunning For Someone Else and When Marketing Becomes Pointless
Generating buzz for new products is certainly beneficial to EMC, and Burton’s announcement paid off in a big way in terms of corporate valuation. But mean-spirited taunting, like Twitter fights, will backfire. EMC should focus its newfound marketing muscle on positive messaging, not provoking their smaller competitor.
Disclaimer: EMC paid for my airfare and hotel accommodations to attend this event. They also took me out for an excellent Sushi dinner and snuck into my hotel room to leave some Lindt chocolates on my bed. EMC and NetApp have both also sponsored Tech Field Day, an event I organize.
It’s a pattern of behavior stemmed from poor leadership. Funny or not it’s classic EMC or in other words jealousy expressed when you have no other card to play.
2 points to make. #1. Grow up EMC. #2. their product is not unified.. it’s multiple OS masked as 1.
“They show that EMC considers NetApp their main market threat.”
Perhaps, or perhaps someone at EMC simply has a sense of humor. I tend to believe the latter.
I thought hiring a stunt rider named Bubba to jump a few car lengths in a Florida parking lot, and hiring a group of teenage girls to pack themselves into a Mini was a bit goofy but I’m sure someone had fun coming up with ideas funded by a generous budget.
However, I would have been more entertained with a video of EMC stenciling NetApp’s sidewalk and positioning its Minis in front of their headquarters…and the reaction of Netapp employees the following day.
None of it as childish as the back and forth tit-for-tat sparring that occurs daily on the employee blogs of several major vendors, including NetApp and EMC.
It’s a pattern of behavior stemmed from poor leadership. Funny or not it’s classic EMC or in other words jealousy expressed when you have no other card to play.
I assumed that the EMC people were at NetApp offices for job interviews!
C’mon folks — lighten up already!
— Chuck
Joe Tucci: 1990s “Stick a fork in them [NetApp], they’re done!”
Good call, idiot.
EMC is looking for new markets: Clown for your kids birthday, coming soon… car wash (Mini only, sorry, version 0.0)…
Well, definitely scared of NetApp… when you cannot compete then you try to get attention differently… So sorry for EMC…
Don’t they remember to take care of the customer first… Really sorry. I’d better look for a vendor who cares about my business now. Will certainly call NetApp. EMC, thankyou for thetip!
Not sure NetApp really can complain much about EMC about being childish when they’ve been pretty childish themselves. i.e. roving NetApp billboards circling EMCWorld?
As a customer (of both) they each make me roll my eyes; I’m guessing it’s less for the customer and for the employees. Like how SGI & Sun employees used to line up and yell taunts at each other.
Good humor. While these two (Netapp/EMC) clown around the Oracle unified storage seems to make 2X folds in stability and features. It wasn’t a product I’d even consider deploying a year ago; this year it is. Next year both of these two storage companies will be scrambling to come up with a strategy to respond to it. Wake up NetApp. NetApp missed the boat not deploying NFS/RDMA, even after sponsoring the project. Now that NFS/RDMA is in the mainline redhat kernel and in solaris there will be a performance war the likes of which NetApp can’t win without an implementation scramble. IB and iWARP aren’t going away– Not with oracle now owning 10% of an IB switch company.
I don’t know which antic I find more outrageous…
That a supposed ‘industry leader’ would vandalize the property of their competitor
– or –
That said supposed ‘industry leader’ would rationalize the vandalism as merely ‘temporary’
I believe Abraham Lincoln summarize’s this situation well when he said,
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
All they have is being different. Not better, just different. it’s all about managing their complexity which is what ultimately may drive them to the ground. All you have to do is look at their announcements. They (EMC) are very vulnerable because they have come to the realization that customer behavior has changed and when customer behavior changes, the incumbent is in…danger.
It used to be that for Tier-2 SAN, EMC was the standard for years. But right now, we’re not talking about Tier 2 SAN anymore,we’re talking about Virtualized apps and the fact is that the “standard” is shifting into NetApp’s favor.
EMC’s goal has nothing to do with gaining market share and innovation. It has to do about being good enough to retain their market share and prevent customer defections. Everything they do is about being “good enough”, it;s about been a “me too”. Their measuring stick is NetApp.
Ummm….Tucci was not at EMC in the 1990s…..IDIOT.
A little of both….sense of humor and definitely sees them as their main competition and a threat – otherwise they’d ignore them…….pretty funny when the field force of EMC dwarfs NetApp.